Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself

by Michael Shapiro

In Bottom of the Ninth , Michael Shapiro brings to life a watershed moment in baseball history, when the sport was under siege in the late 1950s

"A fascinating look at an almost forgotten era . . . One of the best baseball books of recent seasons." - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Shapiro reveals how the legendary executive Branch Rickey saw the game's salvation in two radical the creation of a third major league―the Continental League―and the pooling of television revenues for the benefit of all. And Shapiro captures the audacity of Casey Stengel, the manager of the Yankees, who believed that he could remake how baseball was played.

The story of their ingenious schemes―and of the powerful men who tried to thwart them―is interwoven with the on-field drama of pennant races and clutch performances, culminating in the stunning climax of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, when one swing of the bat heralds baseball's eclipse as America's number-one sport.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, History, Nonfiction, Business

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 2009

About the author

Michael Shapiro is the author of multiple non-fiction books. His work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, New York, and Esquire. He is a tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably more like a 3 or 3 1/2 star book, but I bumped it up because of the focus on the 1960 World Series. As others have mentioned, the book is about Branch Rickey's and Bill Shea's failed attempt to launch a third major league: the Continental League. Shapiro contends that had the Continental League been launched, MLB would have been forced to confront the revenue inequities between the Yankees and Dodgers on one hand, and everyone else. He also contrasts the failure to launch of the Continental League with the successful launch of the AFL (with revenue sharing). The AFL eventually merges with the NFL and overtakes baseball as America's favorite sport. Shapiro attributes that to revenue sharing of TV money and the resulting equality between teams that gives any team a chance to beat any other on any given Sunday (the Browns excepted).

While that story is interesting, the author or the publisher must not have thought it had enough appeal to the average baseball fan, so they added the story line of the final years of Casey Stengel's managerial career with the Yankees. That story isn't really integrated into the story of the Continental League although the timelines are concurrent. I can see why many readers might have a problem with that, but I didn't because the Stengel story line culminates with the greatest World Series ever played: 1960. It's always a pleasure to read about the Pirates beating the evil empire in seven games on one swing of Bill Mazeroski's bat!

Fans of the late 50's, early 60's era of baseball should enjoy this book. Pittsburgh Pirates fans should especially enjoy it.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bottom of the Ninth, by Michael Shapiro, is an interesting book. Subtitled Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself, it is actually about two unrelated stories. The early part of the book focuses more on Casey Stengel’s run as manager of the New York Yankees. The other story, which moves to center stage later, is about the attempt by Branch Rickey and William Shea to create The Continental League, a third professional circuit that would work with major league baseball, rather than be an outlaw league like the prior attempts.

Both tales are about baseball, and the activities in the book take place in the short span of 1958 to 1960; though, of course, a great deal of background from prior years is included. From the title, I thought that Rickey and Stengel joined forces in some gargantuan baseball effort. But the Stengel and Rickey stories have nothing to do with each other. That’s fine, but unexpected and resulting in a kind of disjointed book.

I found the Continental League’s brief time to shine the more interesting of the pair. The National League had held off challenges from the American Association and other professional leagues. Ban Johnson, Rickey’s inspiration, had crafted the American League, tenaciously held on and then reached an agreement that resulted in Major League Baseball. The two then successfully fought off the Federal League in 1914 and 1915. A 1922 Supreme Court Decision granted Baseball exemption from anti-trust laws. It was a multi-million dollar monopoly run by barons.

After the Dodgers and Giants abandoned New York City (to the Yankees) for southern California in 1958, New York lawyer William Shea and future hall of fame executive Branch Rickey (architect of the powerhouse Cardinals and Dodgers teams) set out to bring major league baseball to seven big cities…and New York City. Future major league cities such as Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Atlanta were part of the proposed Continental League.

Shapiro does a nice job examining the rise and fall of the Continental movement, including the initial attempt to work with the major leagues and, after that failed, to work with Congress. The Continental had an uphill fight, but in 1959, it was a real threat to the majors. Obviously, the Continental never played a game, but it did force baseball to expand; something it had resisted for decades. The Astros, the Mets, the Rangers (who were first the Senators) and the Angels owe their formations to the Continental League’s impudent attempt.

Casey Stengel had failed miserably as manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston (later Milwaukee, now Atlanta) Braves. He was managing the AAA Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League in a nice ‘almost retired’ gig. (he was almost 60). He was a complete surprise as the new Yankee hire in 1949, then proceeded to win five consecutive World Series. But Stengel, who had a loose usage of the English language, was an unconventional manager who platooned ball players (not done at the time) and wasn’t afraid to claim credit and criticize his men.

After “only” two World Series titles in six years, it appeared that Stengel was in danger of losing his job heading into 1960. Shapiro provides a nice look at the inner workings of the Stengel Yankees, as well as the roles played by Hall of Fame front office exec George Weiss and owners Dan Topping and Del Webb (proud constructor of a Japanese internment camp during World War II). After a third place finish in 1959, Stengel led the Yankees back to the World Series, where Bill Mazeroski sealed ‘The Old Professor’s fate.

There are plenty of books that deal with Casey Stengel and his time with the Yankees. It’s worth reading here, but nothing to write home about. But the Continental League stuff provides a fascinating look at the last major threat to Baseball’s monopoly. This one is worth reading.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a bit dry, but a good overview of Branch Rickey’s attempt to form a third major league in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I imagine I had known about the Continental League at some point but had managed to forget everything before reading this. More than anything else, though, I came away from this book with a profound sense of how much baseball management has managed to screw up and how well the other American professional leagues have learned from their mistakes. I realize it’s all hindsight now, but in terms of expansion, television, free agency, and salary caps, baseball owners demonstrated a remarkable lack of vision for a group that should have had much better business sense.
The refusal to acknowledge the westward shift in population and to capitalize on that was remarkably short-sighted and just bad business. The other leagues all eventually managed expansion better albeit not flawlessly actually benefiting from rival leagues. Early pay-per-view television schemes for baseball never went anywhere, but to seek to avoid over-the-air rights where they could have banked on advertising revenue in favor of a narrower market makes me wonder what they were thinking. Finally, the way Marvin Miller played the owners into free agency with the union consistently avoiding any hard salary cap to create the strongest labor union in human history has led to many of baseball’s present problems. The role of salary caps and non-guaranteed contracts in other sports has given other owners much more flexibility and has led to a more vibrant competitive product.
The other really striking thing in this book that was reinforced for me was the dominance of the New York Yankees. The perception on the part of many owners that whatever was good for the Yankees was good for baseball and therefore for their own teams mystifies me. How could owners not want to win? How could they accept lying down for the Yankees and failing to be competitive? It’s always been clear that a winning team makes more than a losing team, so why tie their revenue to when the Yankees came to town to thrash the locals? It’s mind-boggling.
In many ways, I’m amazed that baseball is as healthy as it is even as so many say it’s dying.

[Bill F.]

Michael Shapiro's Bottom of the Ninth is fascinating reading for anyone who loves baseball -or football, for that matter. Although it is told as a parallel story - with a distracting and incongruous outlining of Casey Stengel's final years as manager of the New York Yankees - the real story is about Branch Rickey and his proposed Continental League, which he tried to create between 1958-1960. The CL would be a third Major League that would do for baseball what - it turned out - the American Football League would do for football. Rickey's CL idea is a little-remembered phenomenon that very nearly worked, and Shapiro's recounting of it is excellent.

At heart, Rickey envisioned a fundamental change in the nature of baseball: no longer would the Yankees and a few other teams so totally dominate the American and National Leagues that competitive races for the pennant were nearly non-existent in 80% of the cities that fielded Major League teams. Instead, Rickey envisioned a more balanced setting, with revenue-sharing, a Major League draft and competition. Rickey believed he could build the CL in a few years into a viable league that would merge with Major League Baseball. Like Ban Johnson - whose start-up American League had broken the will of the National League at the turn of the 20th century - Rickey envisioned his Continental League forcing the other Major League owners to expand.

But Rickey's was not to be expansion for the sake of novelty. Rickey was adamant that his Continental League was not a ruse simply to get the American and National League owners to finally open up Major League Baseball to other cities through expansion franchises in the existing leagues. As Shapiro deftly outlines, however, Rickey was duped. Many of the potential Continental League owners that Rickey had assembled - Craig Cullinan (Houston), Joan Whitney Payson (New York), Jack Kent Cooke (Toronto), and Edwin Johnson (Denver) among others - secretly viewed Rickey's vision to be exactly that: a sham that was merely a way to break the will of the existing Major Leagues and finally get franchises for their respective cities. While Rickey argued that such expansion was a novelty-act - creating new teams that would be unable to be competitive with existing teams - Rickey's potential CL owners wanted to get into that novelty act badly.

Like Ban Johnson - who he viewed as an icon - Branch Rickey believed in competition as the best way to generate and sustain a fan base. For Johnson and Rickey, competition was relative: it didn't matter who a team played so long as the outcome was in doubt. A new league pairing franchises of equal talent against one another - the Continental League or the American League in 1901 - would generate far more excitement and potential for revenue growth for all of the owners than would four new expansion teams in the existing Major Leagues.

Of course, there was another example besides Ban Johnson that Rickey also knew about: Charlie Weeghman. A Chicago businessman, Weeghman desperately wanted to buy either the Cubs or White Sox. When he could not do that, he simply created a third league, with a franchise in Chicago, to being play in 1912. With his Federal League launched, Weeghman even built a new stadium in Chicago - what would become Wrigley Field. But Weeghman never really intended for the Federal League to succeed. His goal was to put enough pressure on the existing owners that they would force the owners of either the Cubs or White Sox to sell to Weeghman in return for his agreement to disband the league. Which is exactly what happened: the Cubs were sold to Weeghman and the other owners Weeghman had suckered into joining him were left to bankruptcy.

The irony is that at the very same time Rickey was looking to launch the Continental League, Lamar Hunt was launching a league that would do exactly that for football. The National Football League had sworn that it would never accept franchises in - let alone merge with - any city that fielded a team in Hunt's new American Football League. Yet, the idea of revenue-sharing and broad competitive sport - which the AFL brought with balanced teams playing competitive games every Sunday - is exactly what contributed to the explosion in popularity of the AFL. It was a success that the NFL could not ignore. Indeed, despite Commissioner Pete Rozelle's claim that the two leagues would never merge, they indeed joined hands in 1970 and today the NFL is the single-biggest competitive professional sports league in the world.

On a side note, one of Shapiro's other noteworthy stories involves Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and his revolutionary idea of pay-per-view television for broadcasting baseball. O'Malley was so convinced in the idea of what we now call cable television, that when he moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, he blacked out all of their games - home and away (with the exception of games against the rival Giants, now in San Francisco) because he refused to let the concept of free baseball on television take root in Los Angeles the way it had in New York.

O'Malley's decision paid off when - on July 17, 1964 - the Dodgers hosted the Cubs with the game being broadcast to 2,500 homes wired to receive it in a four-square mile section of west Los Angeles. Viewers paid $1.50 to view the game. And thus was born the idea of pay-per-view television. Ironically, cable television would have been launched twelve years earlier than it was [in 1976] if not for the Hollywood motion picture industry. So frightened by O'Malley's experiment in 1964, the film industry successfully lobbied politicos to put a referendum on the November 1964 California ballot banning pay television. The referendum passed. Although it only effected California, it so scared off other entrepreneurs that it took a billionaire who didn't care - Ted Turner - to finally launch the concept in 1976.

Shapiro's book is really a testimony to the brilliance of Branch Rickey. In addition to a new league to foster competition, another Rickey innovation that Lamar Hunt's AFL [and very soon thereafter Pete Rozelle's NFL] adapted was the concept of national television contracts versus local television contracts. In addition to revenue-sharing, a pooled television contract would benefit all of the owners in the Continental League. That's exactly what happened in football and it lead to the sport becoming the most watched professional sports entertainment on television.

While baseball did see changes: the abolishment - necessitated by federal court - of the hated reserve clause in 1974 and - finally - revenue sharing in 2005, the sport in 2007 was tied with basketball - well behind football - in popularity. And the financial value of NFL franchises are far, far greater than baseball. On average, NFL teams are valued at $957,000,000 -far greater than baseball, which is roughly $450,000,000.

More important, though, is the discrepancy between teams' values: in football, the richest team, the Dallas Cowboys, is worth $1,200,000,000 while the poorest team, the Minnesota Vikings, is worth $782,000,000. The richest is thus twice as valuable as the poorest. In baseball, however, the richest team, my beloved Yankees, are worth $1,200,000,000 while the poorest team, the Florida Marlins, aer worth $256,000,000. The richest team is thus five times as valuable as the poorest in baseball.

Rickey's plan for a league fell apart when the owners of Major League Baseball were able to peel away some of Rickey's owners by agreeing to expansion. The American League expanded in 1961, and the National League in 1962. Shapiro's book is a fascinating look at the divergent paths that baseball and football took, and the billions of dollars that were earned as a result.

[Tim Basuino · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read quite a few books about baseball history (just look at my Goodreads feed!), but one era that typically doesn’t get a lot of attention is the late 50’s/early 60’s. Let me rephrase that… that era doesn’t get a lot of attention, if you look past the New York Yankees.

The Yankees’ dominance of the sport 1949-1964 was in fact quite a bit of a problem in the sense that other American League teams essentially gave up for the bulk of that period. Which makes for not very interesting competition. At the same time America was experiencing the boons of a couple of decades of post-WWII prosperity, and as a partial result, people were moving west and south, and the sport had already witnessed several teams taking advantage of it. In a nutshell, more teams were needed. Along came Branch Rickey with the idea for a third major league.

Of course, that did not actually happen, but the actions certainly inspired, at least partially, baseball’s first wave of expansion in the early 60’s, and most of the cities involved in the plan eventually got a major league team (except for poor Buffalo – it seems odd now that they’d ever be considered, but then again, their AAA teams seem to draw lots of fans).

The Yankees are primarily viewed through the lens of the life and times of Casey Stengel, a subject that has been done a few times before. Baseball’s antitrust exemption is also examined, with a brief foray into the rise and fall of the Federal League. An amusing bit occurs when the stars of the time, including Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle, appear in front of congress with lame defenses of the rule and order that dominated the sport at the time.

And the book concludes with a review of the 1960 World Series, one that must’ve been quite fun and stressful to watch, whether one was a fan of the Yankees or Pirates, or just one of baseball in general.

Lots of good stuff, but a bit too scattered for my taste. I think if the book had centered on the Continental League and antitrust situation, it would’ve held together better – other topics have been covered up and down. While I do agree that baseball should’ve had a better version of revenue sharing earlier, it’s hard to say here in 2018 that the sport is really suffering – certainly I pay it a lot more attention than other sports, particularly football. The $3 I spent for the book seems about appropriate.

[Brent Soderstrum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really two separate stories that both take place from 1958-1960. Shapiro doesn't try to connect them at all. Or, if he does, the attempt to do so is weak.

The main story is the work of Branch Rickey to get Major League Baseball to accept the Continental Baseball League as a third league. Branch Rickey is an old man when this story takes place. He has left Pittsburgh as a consultant and wants to get the owners of baseball to welcome 8 additional teams to the 16 that are already in baseball through the Continental League. This really got going as a result of the Dodgers and Giants moving to the West Coast. New cities wanted baseball and the owners were dragging their feet to let others into their exclusive club. William Shea was really pushing to get a second team back in New York. Rickey thought with him leading the 8 owners that Baseball would see the light. It is a story of herding cats.

First, he needed to get the 8 cities committed. This was a struggle with cities agreeing and then leaving. They also had to stand tough with the group despite being tempted by Baseball. They had to find some players too.

If Baseball wouldn't agree to allow them into their club, they could work through Congress. Finally, if that failed they could become an outlaw league. The story works through all of this in the three year period.

The second story woven-in Casey Stengel and the New York Yankees. Casey was also old and coming to the end of his career. The Yankees were a juggernaut winning pennant after pennant. 1958 saw them win it all...barely. 1959 they fell to third which was unacceptable for the Yankees. 1960 appeared to be Stengel's last shot as manager of the Yankees. We all know how that ended up.

I guess the three things that wove Branch Rickey and Casey Stangel together was that they were both past their prime, they failed to accomplish their goals, and they both had big egos.

[John Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time (1966) a ten-year-old boy (me) discovered the national pastime (baseball), his first idol (Roberto Clemente) and became a baseball fanatic. This happened not long after Branch Rickey and a bunch of wealthy business men and politicians battled to start (or stymie) a third major league as Casey Stengel and the New York Yankees tried to maintain their dominance of the sport.
Some reviewers have complained that author Michael Shapiro's story wanders about, jumping from one disconnected tale to another. While I can understand that lament and felt that way a few times myself, I came to appreciate and reflect upon the connections. The New York Yankees have frequently epitomized the problems with baseball and Branch Rickey's recipe for expansion was intended to address some of the underlying reasons. Rickey's design to share revenue and level the competitive playing field was foiled, however, by the existing powers-that-be, baseball commissioners beholden to the owners, and special anti-trust exemptions which major league baseball has long enjoyed. Ultimately, the corporate greed and political manipulation that has undermined so much in America reared its ugly head in this twisted tale, dooming the new league and all the innovations it could have brought to baseball.
Like every good story, this one had heroes, Rickey and my own Pittsburgh Pirates, and villains, the Dodger's Walter O'Malley and the New York Yankees. The Pirate-Yankee World Series of 1960 was the stage for the struggle between the haves and have-nots and became a fascinating part of the intertwined tale. Rickey, the man behind the first black player in major league baseball (ironically the Dodger's Jackie Robinson) and its first Latino hall of famer, Roberto Clemente, spent his career looking outside the box. O'Malley, the grand manipulator, did all he could to protect his own interests and those of the existing owners, no matter the impact on players, smaller market teams, or even the poor people he dislocated to build his stadium at Chavez Ravine.
As to that fanatic who discovered baseball in 1966, I lament that baseball has become another victim of the unbridled greed that plagues America. This disillusioned former fan didn't watch a single inning of baseball last season and is unlikely to ever do so again. The foundation for this ruination was laid in The Bottom of the Ninth.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the 'behind the scenes' of the day to day attempt of the third league. I wonder how more successful the teams would have been if they would have stuck together and formed the league and set up the round robin World Series that they were talking about starting.

[Peter M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the history of the game in the late 50’s. And now I know why Shea stadium is named as such!!!!

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shapiro hinges his tale of Major League baseball's gradual but seemingly unstoppable descent to second-rate fan-dom around the most momentous home run in baseball history.

I was 18 months old and a future Pittsburgh Pirate fan when Bill Mazeroski sent his home run out of Forbes Field and stunned the perennially-powerful New York Yankees in 1960. Baseball in my lifetime has been a tale of bitter strikes, backroom scheming, and drug-driven scandals, which have left the game shrinking in popularity far behind the juggernaut NFL which seems, despite its own strikes, schemes, and scandals, to hold a license to print money on the teflon-plated strength of its fan base and unparalleled television success.

Shapiro promises a "daring scheme" in the subtitle, and delivers: the tale of the Continental League, a planned "third" major league in eight cities was indeed an audacious attempt to bring Major League baseball to new population centers as America moved south and west. The Continental, ironically enough, was driven by the departure of two established New York teams to the West Coast in the mid- 50s, leaving the huge New York market alone in the hands of the Yankees. The Continental hoped to fill this New York void (and the city's new stadium in Flushing Meadows), and promised new business plans far-reaching in their audacity and scope: revenue sharing of all television contracts, player drafts based on prior year team performance, pooled minor league talent so a single team (i.e. the Yankees) could not hoard talent, and revenue enhanced by games broadcast on pay-per-view television!

While Shapiro does provide some coverage of the game on the field, particularly the saga of the Yankees and their aging but baseball-powerful manager Stengel, his focus is on the back-room machinations between the Yankees, the American and National Leagues, the Commissioner's office, New York City government, potential backers in new Continental league cities, and Congress. Moves and countermoves come fast and furious during the two years documented here, most of them focusing on attempts to raise money, win Major League approval for the new league, and uphold or end the anti-trust exemption Major League baseball has enjoyed since 1922.

Particularly interesting is the overlap in financial backers and cities between the Continental League and the American Football League, which Shapiro sketches in parallel. While the NFL is usually credited with forward-thinking money moves like revenue sharing and national television deals, most of those ideas originated not with the NFL, or even the more progressive AFL, but with baseball's Continental League . . .

. . . which never fielded a team or played a game! Yet Shapiro's tale shows how its influence extended all the way to the Super Bowl and its delivery of a megalithic world-wide audience to commercial sponsors.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, so why not give it five stars:

--too many characters and thumbnail biographies threaten to derail the main story. Every time Shapiro introduces a new character, he provides a paragraph (or more) thumbnail, and sometimes two or three of these thumbnails strung together left me flipping back pages to pick up the main thread to remember why he was introducing these characters in the first place.

--Shapiro never really integrates the financial and expansion part of his history with the on-the-field coverage, which seems superfluous at times. I think he might have been better served to drop the on-field framework of the book (Shapiro's tale covers the 1958 to 1960 seasons in nine innings, with three headings under each), and use the extra space to spend more time carrying the story of MLB's response to the Continental League's challenge through the next thirty years of expansion and franchise movement.

Still, fans of the game who wonder how MLB grew to its current size at the same time it was sliding to its second-level position of fan support will find this book of great interest.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: The story of how two legendary figures, Branch Rickey and Casey Stengel, attempted but failed in schemes to transform the game of baseball.

When I first picked up this book, my attention was arrested by the front cover photograph. It shows a group of fans on a high vantage point overlooking a baseball park. I studied it more closely and wondered if the ballpark was Forbes Field, where I'd caught a game as a kid. It was indeed! It turns out that this was a famous photograph taken by George Silk from the top of the Tower of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh at the moment Bill Mazeroski's bottom of the ninth home run won the 1960 World Series for Pittsburgh, defeating Casey Stengel's Yankees, and ultimately Stengel himself who was "resigned" by the Yankee owners. This ended Stengel's tenure as the "managerial genius" of a string of pennant and World Champion Yankee teams.
This was also a moment of defeat and vindication for Branch Rickey, who weeks earlier saw his dream of a third major league, the Continental League, die. He envisioned a league of young, talented players, not yet as polished as the other two leagues, but on parity with each other, and in time with the rest of the majors. Eight cities would get teams, some, like Bob Howsam's Denver, for the first time, and some like Bill Shea's New York gaining a new team for those it had lost. Oddly, Pittsburgh's victory vindicated at least part of Rickey's vision, because he had helped assemble the core of the championship team, including Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente.

Michael Shapiro weaves together the narratives of these two men over the three years preceding October 1960. I will grant that both are interesting subjects, but I could not see how Stengel was trying to transform baseball, other than to leave his mark as a shrewd manager. It felt to me that Shapiro needed Stengel to inject a baseball element into a book concerned with Rickey's attempts to recruit prospective owners and through suasion and legal maneuvering to win over existing league owners to the idea. Much of this involved negotiations, personal meetings, and public relations, not the most interesting material narratively.

Still, both stories demonstrate the power of owners zealous to protect their own financial interests, even when this was not in the best interests of the game. Del Webb and Dan Topping, as Yankee owners figure large in both stories. Walter O'Malley, who took the Dodgers from Brooklyn to L.A., denied Webb the opportunity to build Chavez Ravine, and was concerned to protect and expand his own TV earnings, exemplified the spirit of the owners. Ultimately, they block the new league by luring Bill Shea, who was seeking a team for New York (after whom Shea Stadium was named) and three other prospective owners with the lure of expansion franchises, which generally spent the rest of the sixties at the bottom of the standings.

Shapiro cites the experience of the American Football League as an example of what could have happened if Rickey's dream had been allowed to come to fruition. The league teams developed rapidly, played with competitive parity, and eventually merged with the NFL, injecting new life into pro-football, which surpassed baseball in viewership during this period.

Shapiro's book makes an interesting read, especially as he recounts the 1960 World Series, Stengel's fateful pitching choices, his choice to pull Clete Boyer early in the Series and the fateful seventh game. Likewise, Rickey's vision to transform baseball and the missed opportunity is fascinating to ponder. However, Shapiro's interweaving of Rickey and Stengel only makes sense as an attempt to spice up Rickey's story with some baseball, and one of baseball's most colorful managers, not as a story of two men trying to "save baseball from itself" as the subtitle asserts.

[Stephen Varone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sports and Pastimes

[J.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical Baseball Moments

BOTTOM OF THE NINTH is a baseball fan's dream. The book is filled to the top with historical moments, lore, and characters that shaped America's national pastime. The books spans several years in one of baseball's defining moments in history.

This book is not for everyone, as it is loaded with players, managers, political figures, prominent city people, cities, states, and their little (or big) stories and motivations. With the sheer volume of stuff going on in this book it is hard to keep track, but the mastery of the writing is almost magical. The author, Michael Shapiro keeps dumping data, quotes, stories, and reports, and accounts but it never gets lost or overpowering because the way it is all integrated into the story and the chapters. Reading this book is truly like reminiscing about the good old days of baseball, which is further supported because most of the people involved in the main two story arcs aren't even big name baseball players! It's like sitting around a bar listening to people talk about the phenomenal game of baseball in the Micky Mantle era.

BOTTOM OF THE NINTH is a tale of a sport (and the men and women associated with it) defining themselves for the next several decades. I learned so much from this book that I am amazed. I never knew that there was serious consideration for the development of a third baseball league, the Continental League. There is so much history about politics and baseball cities. The stories of Casey Stengel are classic. His personality and the way the players and public viewed him is captured perfectly. Reading the pages you can feel the disgust, contempt, and appreciation that various people felt at any given moment.

This is a wonderful tale about the people of baseball in the 50s. There are enough play-by-play of classic great games that any baseball fan, no matter how die-hard, will enjoy this book. If you get chills from hearing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" you will enjoy this book more than others. If you just like baseball, then you may be discouraged by the massive amount of information conveyed in each chapter.

Good reading,

J.Stoner
http://plantsandbooks.blogspot.com

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this book 3 stars for the subject matter more than anything, as I found the writing and clarity to be lacking. That being said, it was a really interesting book about the failed attempt to form a 3rd major league in the late 50s / early 60s. The Continental League was going to field teams in NY (later became the mets), Houston (later became the Astros), Minneapolis (later became the Twins), and 5 other cities, including Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver.

Basically MLB was refusing to expand and there was a huge demand for baseball in America at this time. The Continental League never got off the ground, but did force the MLB to expand (addding the Mets, Twins, Astros, and Angels in the early 60s). I had no idea that there was so much to the story of MLB expansion and I liked the book for bringing the story to light.

I wish Shapiro would have kept the story tight. He put way too much information about the 1958, 1959, and 1960 World Series. All of that was interesting, but not at all necessary to tell this story. It would have made a better book if it were about 50 pages shorter and stayed more on point. Still a good book about an interesting topic and if you're a baseball fan - I'd recommend picking it up.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book, however I couldn't. I found it extremely boring throughout most of it. There were some good biographical pages of players and men around baseball, but most of the time it was about the start up of a new league. The Continential League with Branch Rickey took on the major leagues. This was more about finances and how a league could be created. It's not really a baseball book, but yet it is. It's more of a baseball history book about this particular topic. Not about players or teams or even what is really happening on the larger scale about the game of baseball. It's about Branch Rickey and his power play to make the game of baseball take on expansion teams and further his legend like Ban Johnson's. I just couldn't get into this book. It's too short in a lot of places but yet drones on and on in even more places. I just can't really recommend this book to anyone but true baseball historians or people interested in this one event. I can't see the average baseball fan wanting to pick it up.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bottom of the Ninth is a must read for all baseball historians, enthusiasts and anyone who is interested in how the modern expansion era of baseball came to be. The book juxtaposes the final years of Casey Stengel with the New York Yankees with Branch Rickey's unexpected quest to bring about the kind of change in baseball unseen since the time when American League and National League joined forces in the early part of the 20th century. Baseball was at a crossroads at this moment, with both the Giants and Dodgers heading west, leaving NY without an NL team, and the powers that be steadfast in keeping the old order where only a few teams competed each year with the other teams riding the financial coattails of their success. This book provides great insight into the opportunities that were missed and how others sports including the NFL were able to benefit from the wisdom of the venerable Branch Rickey. This should be considered an important read for anyone interested in what shaped the modern game.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quickly was overwhelmed by the amount of characters in the Continental League story. That side of things was not interesting to me so I skimmed basically all of that story past 100 pages other than reading about a few owners. I didn't realize they had to basically renegotiate their salary after every season that couldn't have been much fun. Being on the Yankees couldn't have been much fun either, knowing you were one bad game away from the minors, kind of sad really.
The baseball side was more interesting.

I liked how the book focused on Casey Stengel and not so much on Mantle. It completely changed my uninformed idea of the guy. It also helped fill in the later stages of Rickey's career though it was so busy I couldn't really follow all the team dealings he was involved with but I got the overall message.

[Larry Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, I learned a lot about the attempt to form the Continental league in the late 1950s/early 1960s. It was interesting to see the machinations of the owners from an internal perspective. It was enlightening and yet disturbing.

Putting it in the context and timing of the end of Casey Stengel's career with the Yankees is a nice touch, since he became the first manager of the Mets.

While I have never had a great affinity for the owners of baseball teams my estimation of them has suffered further because of this story.

A part of baseball history that is important to know, and a recounting of the last Stengel Yankee years is a good read, but not as compelling as it might have been. Worth reading, but not as fluid a story as many others.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fantastic book chronicles baseball between 1958 and 1960 - the years in which both that sport and professional football were faced with the creation of new leagues. Lamar Hunt's AFL survived, but baseball's Continental League is not well remembered by even the most knowledgeable baseball fans. Shapiro posits that this is the moment in which baseball failed to prevent football overtaking it as the national game, and he tells his story through the fascinating characters of Branch Rickey and Casey Stengel. World Series play-by-play accounts bookend a history of politics and wheeling and dealing. Loved it.

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent baseball book that takes a look at the failed continental league. This wasn't attempt Led by Branch Rickey to form a third major league. The majority of this book looked at the business aspect of putting together and forming a new league. There was a little bit of on the field action too, as The ups and downs of the New York Yankees led by Casey Stengel were chronicled. The baseball on field action was a little forced and confusing at time. It was odd that only the Yankees were chronicled. I did enjoy hearing about this failed league, and it would have been interesting to see what happened to baseball had the league succeeded.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look back at the twilight years of Casey Stengel as a Yankees manager, which happened to roughly coincide with an attempt to create a third major baseball league, a project led by former Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey. Shapiro makes a powerful case for the greed and short-sightedness of the American and National League team owners in trying to quash this new league before it could get started as a hinge point in the decline of baseball as America's national pasttime and the rise in popularity of football. Good, solid, steadily entertaining history.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the information contained in "Bottom of the Ninth" was interesting, it didn't hold my interest. I plowed halfway through the book, and then adopted the "life is too short to read boring books" position and moved on.

For folks interested in learning about the 1960s, and especially New York baseball, likely this would be an excellent read. The subject left me cold.

Yawn.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story for baseball fans of a certain age. Tells the story of Bill Shea and Branch Rickey's battle for expansion in the major leagues in the late 50's. The end result was the birth of the Mets, Astros, Senators and Angels, and ultimately the 1969 expansion. A little too much digression into the Yankee's seasons around that time. I just did not see the relevance to the story.

[Keith Gerlach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but I have read much better baseball books! It does explain why (because of the owners and the owners of the Yankees and Dodgers in particular) baseball owners STILL have their head up their ass as far as parity and revenue sharing!! Which is 1 reason why football passed baseball in popularity.

[Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is split between the creation of the Continental League and the story of Casey Stengel's last years with the Yankees. The two never really cross. It's really two books and the focus is diluted. Some entertaining sections, but unsatisfying as a whole.

[Vinnie Vrotny]

I am enjoying the discussion of the Continental League, something that I was vaguely aware of but did not know the detail about.

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A detailed account of a part fo Baseball History that has been overlooked by many of the popular accounts. Yet another reason to dislike the Yankees.

[Goldallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and informative. Brought to light a part of baseball history of which I was totally unaware.

[Bryan]

continental league 6/3/2009

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book about a third major league. This league also helped the NFL become what it is today. You end up feeling sad for Branch Rickey.